Neocolours

yeah, I know all about the "Can't find a partner because everyone else is already coupled off" thing. It sucks.

Ooooh this ^
But since we are both over 30, have you not found the new possible group of divorcees (with or without possible stepkids) or worse, the still-married-but-looking-for-something-on-the-side-but-doesn't-tell-you-about-that-marriage partner yet?
I didn't have to deal with the last one, but some of my friends have...

I'm still renting, a house is something of a faraway dream still
I do hope there will be some pictures of all the newly bought property!

I just got a little real estate thing in the mail. In my neighborhood in Toronto, a bungalow (most seem to have three bedrooms) seems to go for anywhere from $475k to $900k. Townhouses in here are $800k to over a million. There are some two-storey houses in this thing for $1.3-$1.4 million. I don't see any of the big houses like this one and this one listed for sale in here, but I can only imagine (oh, wait, there's one listed for $2mil).

I know that in some parts of Alberta, prices are absolutely insane -- close to a million for tiny houses. Even mobile homes there cost more than two-storey houses where I used to live on PEI.

My apartment's not bad -- $850 a month plus hydro, for a good-sized bachelor. I believe the rent was reduced from the usual $900+ because they're tearing my building down in a year or so to make way for a big condo building, though.

You can rent an apartment for $600 on average here, and not-so-bad houses might sell from as little as $15k. The drawback is that if you live out in the area that my boyfriend does, your closest neighbor might look like this and your Walkscore might be in the negatives. Location, location, location.

Wingsrising wrote:If I were queen of the universe, I'd have us go back to the old format where people made new threads for most achievements/woes (both RL and Neo/Subeta/other game related). I feel like we used to have more conversation that way.

This! I think we've all become new-thread-phobic or something.

Marah wrote:But what to do if there aren't any parties? Or you're at the age where your friends won't go because BABIES!

This also :/ (well I'm not really a party person TBH, but just to go up the pub more than once a month would be nice!)

Cranberry, wow those are some steep prices! Those sort of prices you'd pay for a place close to London, esp. North/West outer London area. Central London or the more fashionable bits are even steeper. I was once looking in an estate agent's window in Chelsea and saw an apartment for rent for £1200 which I didn't think was too bad - until I realised that was per week and not per month.

In my town an average family home (3 bedroom semi-detached) will set you back anything from around £210k to £350k+ depending on whether you want one in a fashionable bit or the badlands. Prices are probably a bit above average for the general area becuase there are good connections to London & Gatwick by train and road so there are lots of commuters.

You want some photos!? We got the building inspector's report back yesterday and it turns out there's a couple of things wrong with the house (it was built in the 1940s so I guess that's to be expected?).

Check out the broken beam in the roof:


Also, a valve in the hot water heater is broken and some of the lights trip the circuit breaker when they're turned on and most bizarrely a bunch of power points in one of the rooms don't work O____O

Thankfully, contracts are great and all this stuff will need to be fixed or the final house price reduced to compensate for the cost of fixing them! Yay.

@Marah - it boggles my mind how married people can lie about that sort of thing. It's just the cruelest thing ever. Can't the cheating scumbags go on that dating site that links them up with other cheating scumbags? They give people in legitimate open relationships a bad name.

How does dating a divorcee go? Is it different from dating a non-divorcee? Is there lots of baggage?

@Cranberry - Yeah! That stuff's expensive. Is there industry or a huge population in that area to inflate things?

It's just a really nice part of the city, next to a giant (400 acre) park. I live in this neighborhood.

Hm, from that map and description it sounds like Shenton Park - http://www.domain.com.au/Public/suburbp ... ton%20Park - and the prices are comparable assuming parity.

Of course, Shenton Park is next to a 1,000 acre park

EDIT: I made my own thread! Now you guys can get even more information so I won't feel bad for attention whoring out this thread! viewtopic.php?f=22&t=12291

EVERYBODY ELSE, make more threads! I want to learn about things.

Oh, quick question: is the chit-chat forum publicly viewable? I ask because "Madge" is my real name, and it's a rare enough name that I might be a little opposed to posting some private secret facts about myself that I still like to share with internet friends without risking random strangers who google me finding out about me!

(Once I banned a guy in one of the groups I ran at the time from said group because he threatened someone. He googled "Madge Perth" or something similar, found a friend's blog which had my full name, then used that to find my email address and sent me a vitriolic email, so I've been a little spooked. Nothing came of it other than that rude email, criticising the way I ran the group, to which I responded "I am a tyrant. You are not welcome" - hard for someone to insult the way you run a group when you admit you're tyrant, isn't it?)

Cranberry, I am crying inside at the name SuperFetch for a dog boutique. That's awful.

Madge - it looks like Chit Chat is visible to anyone. I think it needs to be visible from the index so people see that we do have an offtopic forum (I wouldn't join a board which didn't have one) but if people wanted, I could make it so that guests can see the forum but not read the forum (I don't know whether that means they can see topic titles, or whether they'd get a login prompt on that page and have all the topics hidden).

What do people think? (Madge, I do have to point out that "Madge Perth" is available on any thread you've posted on given it's your username+chosen location)

I think it's crazy how much you can find out about someone online... I don't think most people realize. On my dog forum, I once tracked down a terrible backyard lab breeder using the EXIF data on a photo her daughter posted. Found her exact address, then an ad the mother had put up selling pups (included a phone number), and from there the entire family's Facebooks and therefore full names. I didn't DO anything with the info, but it's crazy how much I found in a short time. I'm usually fairly careful about things I post online, but I know I'd be relatively easy to find for anyone who really cared to look. It's getting really hard to maintain privacy online nowadays. I mean, who even thinks that they could be found from photos they post? (Here's an example of what I mean. Most cell phones now, plus a lot of cameras, automatically include GPS info in their EXIF data.)

@Marah - it boggles my mind how married people can lie about that sort of thing. It's just the cruelest thing ever. Can't the cheating scumbags go on that dating site that links them up with other cheating scumbags? They give people in legitimate open relationships a bad name.

Don't worry madge, I don't think many people confuse open relationships with cheating. Or at least I hope not.
I'm always surprised how it is always the "other womans" fault. Even when the guy just never told her he was married and she thought she was in a serious relationship...

And I know that the fact that this forum is visible to all and that NC has so many 0 post members have stopped me from posting here before. You just never know who can find this information.

@Jazzy - yeah, I know, having my location in my profile is bad from a privacy point of view! But I think the creep online found me by searching for my full name and a few other keywords I won't put on here just because I'm allowed to be super paranoid now, or something?

If people want to be secretive and post personal info (not sure how much demand there would be tbh), we could always create a top secret board that's invite only (or maybe is auto activated at say, 20 posts - hard for a spammer to get that many, easy for a normal person). But it's probably not that big a deal, even for me who brought it up, since I put so many of my personal details on my blog which is linked to my real name anyway

And I know that the fact that this forum is visible to all and that NC has so many 0 post members have stopped me from posting here before.

Regarding the 0 post members, a large number of those are people who haven't activated their accounts so can't actually log in, as far as I know.

Jessi wrote:Oh my goodness yes, it definitely depends on where you live! Townhouses in my neighborhood, north of Seattle, would cost around $180k to start - again, for a townhouse/condo. The closer we get to Seattle, the more expensive it gets, sigh! We're currently saving up for a down payment on a condo closer to the city (not in the heart of downtown) and I can't believe how much we're going to spend on a condo - compared to what would buy a house in Kansas where we lived!

Our apartment here is $905 a month, which is actually quite cheap for the area, so I'm pretty happy. Of course, our townhouse in Kansas was twice as big and $800 a month, haha, so it definitely depends on location!

Prices are pretty similar here, just outside of Philly, though my neighborhood isn't that nice. In nicer ones very close to me, housing prices could easily be double or triple that.

And it was interesting to me to read some of the posts on this thread, since I wanted to stop in and mention why I haven't been around much lately (if anyone even noticed). Well, I've been dating someone for nearly 2 years now, and it's severely cut into my online time, and especially my NC posting/lurking. And, as I think I'm older than most people here, and because of the dating conversation that's been going on, it's probably interesting to note that neither one of us have been married and neither one of us have kids. I met him at the bar (a friend of a friend), after being on online dating sites for a good 5+ years. Anyway, I just wanted to pop in and plan to check in more often now.

Achieveawoe:

I had a fabulous cross-country trip seeing friends and family along the way, California-Arizona-New Mexico-Texas-Arkansas-Tennessee. I drove the 1988 turbo Toyota Supra that i've had for the past two years, belonged to Dad. And we sold it this past week to a friend of mine. I'm going to miss that car, but now (home in TN for a month or so) i'm driving my beloved 1985 Supra that needs serious restoration. And we've had it in the works for way too long. I was hoping to have it ready to drive back to California (and visit other people along that route), but it's not likely, this time. The car still runs, but not perfectly, and we can't find a place that can do everything it needs. I ~could~ possibly ship it to California, with more possible restoration options, but...expensive, no idea how long we'll be there, and rargh. Meanwhile, it IS nice to drive it again, and it's great to be home to visit.

I just found out my insurance explicitly covers visiting a chiropractor or acupuncturist, but does not cover mental illness. Lolwtf?